Informing consumers: Protection from deceptive advertising

Abstract

It is widely accepted that only informed consumers are protected from potential violation of their consumer rights. Advertising represents one of the main ways of informing consumers, so it is of crutial importance for it to include adequate information that can facilitate decision making proces regarding the purchase. With aim of preventing violation of basic consumer rights, advertising is regulated by legislation, both on EU level and on national level in Republic of Serbia, and while so special attention is dedicated to defining advertising that can possibly lead to deception of consumers. Authors of this paper are focused on analysing legislation and theoretical explanations of deceptive advertising. Results of the research regarding advertising in Serbia and ability of consumers to protect themselves from deceptive advertising are presented. The main aim of the authors is to contribute to increasing level of consumers' self-protection through increasing level of their counciousness on deceptive advertising and its concequences.